(re)Release

ACRYLIC ON CANVAS • 20″ x 20″
Sold • prints available; email julie@juliemeridian.com to buy prints ⇢

This one’s a return to a style I enjoy for an auction to benefit Works/San José on December 13th. It’s based on a painting I made years ago called Release. That’s the cheery abstract painting that I’m currently using as a background on my Twitter account. I even decorated my study around it.

This version follows the same color scheme and feel as the original with a few variations. It is a wall-friendly 20″x20″ square, in contrast to the original 48″ x 24″ landscape. I also opted to add more texture to it with a toothy crosshatched base for the background. And: instead of a black border, I kept the border blue to emphasize the wrapped look. Getting the original blue was a little trickier than I anticipated. What you see here was my fourth attempt after starting too thin, then too green-ish, and then too dark.

I picked this one to return to because it is one of the ones that seems to be the most popular when I give visiting friends the “art tour”. It’s also fun to see what people interpret it to be. While painting it, I was thinking of a combination of a falling motion (flower petals, autumn leaves) and a gathering motion (the feeding frenzy of koi or goldfish). I’ve also hear that it looks like fireworks, confetti, and – my favorite for being odd – candy corn.